VizWorld.com

It is not like I really expected a dual GeForce GTX 480 to come out soon. After all, think of the power draw that one card would have. Think of how expensive it would be since even one Fermi card is likely to be north of $500. Think of … well, you get the point.

It looks like dual Fermi won’t be coming anytime soon. A few partners have said that at this time they are not aware that there will be a dual Fermi card and if Nvidia decides to make one, it won’t be close to March 27th’s single GF100 launch.

There are also rumors of a mobile GeForce GTX 480 that was shown at CEBIT in a laptop. Personally, I think that it would be mobile GeForce GTX 48. In other words, it is probably one-tenth what a desktop version would be. I also think that the battery supporting such a beast would have a lifetime measured in seconds.

via Fudzilla.

Hardware fermi, gtx480, nvidia

Not willing to live in the shadow of OnLive, Otoy is back with more details on their own  “games-on-demand” service via a parnership with SuperMicro, AMD, and Intel.  It’s not a complete replacement for OnLive, at least not at first:

The consumer service will be similar to what Steve Perlman envisions with OnLive, the well-financed games-on-demand service backed by big game publishers and AT&T. But Otoy’s approach is very different. The company is operating in a horizontal fashion, while OnLive is more vertical, doing each layer of the service itself. Otoy is licensing its technology to be used in the supercomputer, which is fueled by graphics and processors from Advanced Micro Devices. Hosting companies will offer the cloud-based service to publishers of games and other apps. And consumers will ultimately subscribe to the services.

The hardware is pretty impressive.  Based on AMD’s Fusion Render Cloud technology (which frankly, I thought was dead.. Haven’t heard from this in a while), they estimate that 10 supercomputers could support 1-million users.  What’s in their supercomputer?

A supercomputer will consist of 128 servers, with a total of 250 AMD “Mangy Cours” Opteron microprocessors and 500 graphics chips based on AMD’s Cypress designs. Each of those graphics chips can process 2.7 teraflops, or 2.7 trillion math operations per second. Each supercomputer could serve 3,000 high-definition users, or 12,000 standard-definition users. Otoy’s own software on a consumer’s own machine is tiny, taking up just four kilobytes of data.

So will 2010 be the year of Remote Gaming?  So far we have OnLive, Otoy, and Gaikai all looking at summer releases.

via Otoy says supercomputer will enable revolutionary games-on-demand service | VentureBeat.

Hardware amd, intel, otoy

Big news from GDC regarding the widely speculative OnLive remote gaming service.  While speaking at GDC, Steve Perlmen stated that the system will go live on June 17th, during E3 2010, and cost gamers $14.95 a month for 720p gaming.

Speaking at the GamesBeat@GDC conference today, OnLive chief executive Steve Perlman said gamers will be able to subscribe to the PC or Mac games-on-demand service for $14.95 a month, and get access to a wide variety of current titles from major publishers. It is partnering in this launch with publishers including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, 2K Games, THQ and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. The games will also include new releases like Mass Effect 2, Borderlands, Assassin’s Creed II, as well as a bunch of other titles. Perlman anticipates anywhere from a dozen to 25 titles to be available at launch time, and more after that, depending on how negotiations with other publishers proceed.

An impressive list of collaborators there, bringing some real A-list games to the table.  Limiting it to 720p alleviates some of the bandwidth issues, but leaves incentive for players to go buy the actual games and consoles where they can play at 1080p.  I had hoped the price would be closer to $10/month to compete with services like GameFly, but hopefully the price will fall as time passes.

Press Release via OnLive sets launch date for June, names subscription price and supporting game publishers | VentureBeat.

Hardware onlive, video game

Today’s “Deal Of The Day” at Amazon is the Panasonic HDC-HS250-K HD Camcorder that records to an internal Hard Drive or special SD cards. The full technical details from Amazon:

Product Features

• holds at least 15 hours of HD video at maximum quality
• holds up to 50 hours of standard quality video
• records high-definition AVCHD video to built-in 120GB hard disk drive or optional SD/SDHC memory cards
• maximum video resolution: 1920 x 1080
• 3MOS System has separate image sensors for red, green, and blue

Technical Details

• Brand Name: Panasonic
• Model: HDC-HS250K
• Media Type: Flash card, Hard disk drive
• Lens Type: Zoom lens
• Optical zoom: 12 x
• Maximum Aperture Range: F/1.8-2.8
• Shooting Modes: Digital photo mode
• Video Input: Camcorder
• Display Size: 2.7 inches
• Optical Sensor Resolution: 3.05 MP
• Optical Sensor Technology: 3MOS
• Optical Sensor Size: 1/4.1″
• Audio Input: Microphone
• Microphone Operation Mode: Surround
• Height: 2.9 inches
• Weight: 930.3 pounds
• Depth: 5 inches
• Width: 2.7 inches

This camera normally sells for $899, but today only it’s available for $499! That’s $400 off the normal price!  So if you’re in the market, you won’t find a better price than this.

Hardware camera, panasonic, sale

While this is primarily a visualization site, occasionally we dip into other hardware aspects as they may affect the work we do. For example, we have talked about SSDs in the past, especially with regards to PCI-Express based solutions. Faster access to storage means less time waiting when loading large files, or many small files. Thus we bring you the latest rumor on an Intel chip that we have been salivating over for some time now.

The Nehalem-EX is an eight core chip based on the Nehalem architecture. The -EX tag stands for EXpandable server market. That is, this chip will go into four socket machines, which means that you will have 32 real cores on which to perform your rendering. The Nehalem-EX will be sold as high-end Xeon chips. The current high-end Xeons are the 5500 series. The new chips will occupy the 6500/7500 series range.

The X6550 will have eight cores running at 2.00 GHz, with 18 MB of L3 shared cache and two QuickPath interfaces running at 6.4 GT/s. This CPU has a TDP of 130W.

The X7550 will have eight cores running at 2.00 GHz, with 18 MB of L3 shared cache and four QuickPath interfaces running at 6.4 GT/s. This CPU has a TDP of 130W.

The L7555 will have eight cores running at 1.86 GHz, with 18 MB of L3 shared cache and four QuickPath interfaces running at 5.8 GT/s. This is a lower power version with a TDP of 90W.

The X7560 will have eight cores running at 2.26 GHz, with 18 MB of L3 shared cache and four QuickPath interfaces running at 6.4 GT/s. This CPU has a TDP of 130W.

In case you are wondering, GT/s stands for gigatransfers per second. You can think of this as billions of bits per second. This is the raw data rate without any encoding.

Personally I am looking forward to system with four sockets filled with Nehalem-EX (32 cores), with a Fermi or two in it.  That way when I start rendering, the entire town will brown-out.

via : Intel to release 8-core Xeons this month | Guru3D

via : Intel to Begin Nehalem-EX Shipments This Month | Guru3D

Hardware cpu, intel

CNNMoney has a pair of short interviews with NVidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang about the companies plans. (…)

Hardware intel, interview, nvidia

Recently we told you about NVidia pulling their drivers due to overheating issues. By overheating issues, NVidia means that the drivers caused the fan on NVidia graphics cards to stop working. (…)

Hardware drivers, nvidia

Gizmodo has posted an article on the Clavilux 2000 keyboard. This is a keyboard that visually displays the music that someone is playing. (…)

Hardware music, visualization

At the SuperComputing conference back in November of 2009, one could find the still-yet-to-be-released Fermi graphics card running in the NVidia booth. (…)

Hardware cebit, fermi, nvidia, quadro, supermicro, tesla

Guru3d has a roundup of their coverage of the CEBIT trade show. They uncover several interesting graphics cards, including a Radeon HD 5770 from PowerCooler with 5 DisplayPorts. (…)

Hardware ati, cebit, graphics card, video card

Anandtech has posted an article on THX Certified HDTVs, and asks the question “Is this really useful, or is it just THX selling their logo to make money for themselves?” After reading through the article, my take away from it is that it does make a difference, but that it comes with a cost. (…)

Hardware hdtv, thx

A new video from NVidia lets the Director of Technical Marketing Tom Peterson show off the new GTX480 in the Unigine Heaven benchmark and show the results compared to the Radeon HD 5870.  Some interesting things to note about the demo:

GPU Tessellation is a big deal. (…)

Hardware benchmark, fermi, nvidia

HardwareHeaven has been at Cebit this past week, and has written up their coverage of what you could have seen (had you been there) in each of the booths they visited. (…)

Hardware ati, cebit, fermi, graphics card, nvidia, video card

NVidia has just released new WHQL certified drivers for the GeForce & ION graphics cards.  Not normally a huge deal, but this new driver offers some huge performance boost in certain applications.  From the driver notes:

Increases performance in several PC games from v196.21 WHQL. (…)

Hardware driver, nvidia

XFX is showing off a Radeon HD 5970 Eyefinity6 card at CEBIT this week. Tweakers.net has snagged photos of the card, and posted some information on it. (…)

Hardware ati, cebit, eyefinity, hd 5970, radeon

On March 26, NVidia will be releasing the GeForce GTX 480 and 470. Rumor is that it is 5% faster than the Radeon HD 5870. (…)

Hardware 480, cebit, fermi, geforce, graphics card, nvidia, video card

At CEBIT 2010, MSI is showing an AMD 870 based motherboard with the Lucid HYDRA chip. Lucid is a chip designer company with funding from Intel. (…)

Hardware hydra, lucid, msi

NVidia has updated their nTersect blog with more information about Ion and Optimus including a new demonstration video of Optimus in action.  As before, they show how the 3D Card activates and deactivates as they load a 3D application.  Unlike previous demo’s however, this one goes one further by showing the electrical capabilities of Optimus with an engineering sample, showing that the 3D card is not simply “unused”, but electrically disabled when not in use.  To further drive the point home, they electrically disconnect the 3D card from the system while running, and nothing happens. (…)

Hardware nvidia, optimus

Hexus.net is trolling the halls of Cebit and found a product packaging box for an upcoming Fermi-based video card from an unlikely source, “Colorful”. (…)

Hardware cebit, colorful, fermi, nvidia

NVidia is demonstrating new ION-based laptops at Cebit, partnering them with Optimus for some of the most powerful, least power-hungry laptops to date. (…)

Hardware ion, laptop.optimus, nvidia